Heart of a Star
by Telemain's Daughter
Summary: After surviving the destruction of Scarif, Jyn and Cassian struggle with old enemies and new powers. Good thing they've got each other.


_A/N: I got all the way to the end of Rogue One and I'M SORRY, WHAT? No. I did not just emotionally invest two hours with these characters for ALL OF THEM TO DIE. N to the o-p-e. So I fixed it. Sorry not sorry, Lucasfilm._

 _Let's be clear: I am by no means a Star Wars trivia and mythology buff. I am writing this with a lot of help from Wookiepedia and my own iMaGiNaTiOn, so you may just have to go with me on some of this for the sake of the story._

 _Shout-out to agentromanoffsir of tumblr who puts together beautiful picture posts and whose line I have stolen. It totally should have been in the movie, yes yes._

 _Enjoy, and let me know what you think! All rights belong to the creators._

* * *

She would not let herself look away. The rolling wave of light and fire swept toward them over the rising water, and Jyn did not back down. This kind of destruction was what she and Cassian and the team had given their lives to prevent ever happening again. She would look it in the eye and try not to be afraid.

She was afraid.

Cassian was shaking in her arms. She tightened her hold on him, felt his head raise and his breath on her ear as he whispered words that were lost to the roar of the wave.

She looked away. She turned her head to the man who had saved her life, away from the wave that would end it.

"Cassian?" His eyes were closed. "Hey, Captain, you with me?"

"All the way," he said, and he almost smiled. "We are free now, Jyn—"

The water punched them apart.

Jyn could feel things break inside of her from the force of the blast, her structure and her will weakening. Her hands were empty and her body was alone in terror—Cassian was gone. The water hurled her, hot and choking, end over end. She flailed to find the surface, a direction, a connection that led back to life.

Dark shapes tunneled past her, and when the next form hit her shoulder hard enough to spin her around, she realized it was debris. She grabbed for the nearest piece, clutching it and hanging on though the searing heat of the metal burned her hands. She rode it to the surface before it was ripped away, leaving her coughing and gasping above the water line in a hot white fog.

"Cass!" she yelled, knowing it was futile and not giving a damn. "Cassian!"

Her mother's kyber crystal rose up and smacked her in the teeth, along with a gulp of acidic water. She heard a groaning behind her and circled fast, in time to see the jagged hull of a broken ship coming at her, but not in time to get out of the way.

 _Pain_. She'd never known pain like this before. It tore straight through her heart and stopped her lungs and she dropped beneath its weight as the metal hove by above her, twirling her blood away in its wake.

Something was very wrong, something was lodged inside her chest. Her mind panicked in a slowing spiral, her body unable to obey her. The water would never let her go now. The swirling heat pulled her down, darkness edged out her eyes, and in the moment before she lost herself, she saw how the world was made.

The lines of bright and shadow, the calling of the dark. The singing of the light. The twisting symbiosis of all things. She saw Cassian, so far away. She understood the water and could speak with the storm. She knew what she had to do, and exactly how to do it.

She lost her mind, and she was not afraid.

* * *

When Cassian thought about being dead, as he did an average of seven times a day, he never imagined it would involve this much pain. All things being equal, he might as well be alive again, if this skyscape of agony was death.

He opened his eyes. He was floating in a blood orange cloud, and the blood was in his mouth as well. He ran his tongue over his teeth and was pleasantly surprised to find them all still there. The blood was perhaps not his, then. He turned his head.

Jyn floated beside him, knees drawn up, eyes wide to the distance. Her fingers were shredding her gloves, flaking away bits of leather and peeling away strips of her own skin where the fabric beneath had fused to her hands.

Cassian made to sit up, instantly regretted it, and kept going. "Stop," he croaked, catching at her hands. "Stop it, Jyn."

She turned her head and stared at him, and he wondered if she even saw him. She looked as bad as he felt—half-drowned, half-burnt, and wholly dead, plus or minus assorted broken bones. Blood was leaking from her mouth and spreading into the water on her chin.

"Something happened," she said in a rough voice, not necessarily to him.

"Yes," Cassian said, "you saved my life. You saved the rebellion." Though the rebellion seemed very far away now.

But Jyn was shaking her head slowly, still trying to pick apart her hands despite his efforts. "No. No. Something bad. Something—wrong."

"Jyn?" he began, but then over her shoulder he saw the darkness rolling in. A secondary wave of smoke, oozing greasy grey-black fog into the burning, humid clouds.

They were trapped between the water and the clouds, floating on a piece of metal hull. Jyn closed her eyes and hacked up a cough, and the movement of her chest dragged Cassian's gaze down. The entire front of her shirt was soaked in blood.

The blood. The clouds. The darkness. (The pain.) Cassian tried to force his addled brain to find a solution to imminent suffocation by smoke-fog. They needed clear air, or shelter… He always used to be so fast at improvisation—

Fabric. They needed fabric. He wrestled himself out of his shirt, unable to contain a moan at the stress to his injuries. He dunked the shirt over the side of the raft, soaking it, and then he pulled Jyn closer, careful not to capsize them.

"I can see _everything_ ," she whispered, almost crying.

"I know," he said, not knowing at all. "I know. Lie down."

Jyn collapsed beside him and he spread the wet shirt over both their heads, trying to tent it so they could still breathe. The shirt smelled of cooked fish and copper.

Cassian closed his eyes and thought about being dead for the eighth time that day.

* * *

They weren't dead yet, and that was the main thing. Saw Guerrera had taught her, above all, to survive. At the end of the day, he used to say, if you are alive, you win.

Jyn was ready for this day to be over. She wasn't entirely confident that today was the same day she thought it was, but she was ready for it to be over just the same.

The frightening lines and metaphysical knowledge had retreated to the recesses of her mind, waiting to be probed like open wounds with all the other traumas of the day (whichever day) in the event of her continued existence. The immediate problem was a jammed raft and a distance of some fifty yards through uncertain waters to an even more uncertain shore, with Cassian's unhelpfully unconscious body in tow.

She had no clear memory of how they got to this point. She had no clear memory of much of anything past the blast. She wondered if this was due to hitting her head or another self-preservation scheme by her subconscious, filing everything away to horrify her with it later.

Regardless of the journey, they were here now, and the obvious next steps were arraying themselves before her like a battle plan.

Step One—Assess water level. Jyn half jumped, half fell into the water and pulled herself upright by the edge of their metal scrap. The murky water reached her chest (her mind also wasn't letting her think about her chest). So far, so manageable.

Step Two—Dislodge raft. This was a clear no. They'd been dragging chains below the raft for some time now, rattling along, and the chains had become well and truly lodged around some unseen anchor. Jyn didn't trust her chances on an impromptu underwater recon, and with the shore so (deceptively) close, why bother?

Step Three—Awaken Cassian so you don't have to drag his ass to shore all by yourself. Jyn tried to detach whatever was left of her mind and assess Captain Andor clinically. Her eyes simply refused to look at his left leg, and she settled for jabbing him sharply in the ribs. It took four tries for the pain to get through to him, and he almost overbalanced them both by jerking up.

"Land," Jyn said, trying out the word to see if it made sense. "We need… land."

Cassian nodded, gritting his teeth too hard to speak. He scooted off the raft and fell into the water beside her. She got him up, and she got them to shore (Step Four), narrowing her focus to the goal to try and block out all the pain. (She wondered if it was all coming from her own body, or if she could feel his now too.)

The rocky shore evolved into large, jagged boulders and then a series of caves and cliffs. Jyn picked the closest cave and dumped them in the entrance. She propped herself on the wall and Cassian collapsed against her. She didn't think he was supposed to be this cold.

Step Five—

Step Five—

There was no step five.

There was silence, and breathing. And rocks. And water dripping. And a weird, recurving symmetry to her childhood. Caves. Water, dripping. Death. She would almost swear that far back in the cave there was a child, watching them.

Water, dripping. Death, waiting. Breathe.

Jyn prayed. She'd never cared even half so much about the Force as her parents had, but now was as good a time as any to start.

"The Force is with me," she said, her voice a hoarse crack, repeating the words she'd heard Chirrut say over and over. "I am one with the Force. The Force is with me—"

"I am with you," Cassian muttered, and his icy, shaking fingers wrapped around her arm.

"I am one with the Force, the Force is with me…"

His body stilled beside her. She pressed her lips to his wet hair and whispered, "And you are free."

Then she closed her eyes and awaited Step Five—Death or insanity. Whichever came first.


End file.
